RESEARCH ARTICLE


Functional Ability, Physical Activity and Self-rated Health in Old Age A Cross Sectional Population-based Study in Norway



Lisa Forsen1, 2, *, Gudrun Maria Waaler Bjørnelv1, 4, Hege Bentzen3, Anne Johanne Søgaard1, 4, Sidsel Graff-Iversen1, 5
1 Division of Epidemiology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo
2 National Resource Centre for Women’s health, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo
3 Diakonhjemmet Hospital, Oslo
4 Department of Health Management and Health Economics, University of Oslo, Oslo
5 Institute of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø, Tromsø


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Creative Commons License
Forsen et al.; Licensee Bentham Open

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Po Box 4404 Nydalen, N-0403 Oslo; Tel: +4721078199; Fax: +4721078260; E-mail: lisa.forsen@fhi.no


Abstract

Functional ability (FA) is here defined as having no limitations in five questions related to the ICF dimensions “Activity” and “Participation” (ICF=International Classification of Functioning). The aim was to explore how individual and contextual factors were associated with FA in each gender, and to explore to what extent physical activity (PA) and this measure of FA used in large multipurpose health surveys seem to measure different constructs, and how close the as-sociation between PA and FA was, and whether it differed within self-rated health (SRH), lifestyle and contextual factors. Methods: All men and women aged 75-77 (N=11684) in five counties in Norway were invited to health surveys in 2000-2003. 49% participated (2626 men, 3146 women) with answers on the five questions on FA. Data were analysed using lo-gistic regression, factor analysis, and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Results: Good SRH, no serious pain or stiff-ness in muscles and joints, interest from others, no psychological distress and no weekly use of analgesics, hypnotics, tranquilisers or antidepressants showed the highest positive associations with FA for both men and women. The SEM-estimated correlation of FA and PA items was lowest in healthy elderly (r=0.19 (0.11-0.24)) compared to those with poor health (r=0.40 (0.35-0.45)). FA and PA measured different constructs. Conclusion: According to low correlation between FA and PA in healthy men and women, we suggest that FA and PA did not measure the same construct, and impairments in functional ability did not necessarily mean low level of physical activity if SRH was good.

Keywords: International Classification of Functioning(ICF), functional ability (FA), physical activity (PA), prevalence, struc-tural equation modelling (SEM), cross-sectional, population based, survey , self-rated health (SRH)., .